Small Souls Part 12

"Your boy is a darling, too."

They smiled, happy in their offspring. Gerrit, restless, moved his big limbs almost violently:

"Children, that's the one thing in life!" he shouted. "We don't mean to leave off till we have a dozen, do we, Line?"

"Gerrit, you're quite mad!"

"Oh, but I say, Constance, why leave that lad of yours all by himself?

It's not good for a child."

"No, Gerrit, it's best as it is. It would not make us any happier to have a lot of children."

"I say, you were indiscreet enough to ask if we were happy; now it's my turn. I don't believe that you and your husband get on so very well together."

"Oh, well, we understand each other! Perhaps not even that! But Addie keeps us together. We both dote on him. Van der Welcke dotes on his boy.

So do I. So do I. He is everything, both to him ... and to me...." Her eyes filled with tears. "We are nothing now ... to each other!" She was sitting between Gerrit and Adeline. "I did so _want_ all of you!" she continued, taking each of them by the hand. "Be nice to me, will you? I am simply pining for affection. My child is all to me, but he is still so young; and I tell him too much as it is.... Heavens, what a life I have had these last few years! No, you were not kind! Why did you never, never once come to me, in Brussels?"

"But, Constance dear," said Gerrit, "if we had only known that you would have liked us to! Remember, you never sent us a line. You only wrote to Mamma; and she did go to see you once or twice. Own up: we had become strangers."

"Let us be friends again, then! Be nice to me! Your dear little wife ...

I don't know her.... But you are my sister, too, Adeline, are you not?

Be a little fond of me."

"Yes, of course, Constance. And let us see a lot of each other."

"Tell me, Gerrit; what is Bertha like now?"

"Bertha is very nice. Bertha is an exemplary mother, an excellent wife.

Bertha has a busy life. They do a great deal of good, they live for their children, they see heaps of people. They are in the upper ten, or, rather, the upper two or three of the Hague. We are not, you know. And we never go to their big dinners; we are not in their set at all."

"I don't even go to Bertha's at-homes," said Adeline.

"And yet we are very good friends. And Bertha is very nice; and, when Adeline is expecting a baby, which is the usual state of affairs with us, Bertha is just like a mother. But she and her husband live in their own circle, which is very big and busy and important and smart and all the rest of it."

"So Adolphine and Van Saetzema...?"

"Oh, you needn't ask: they don't go to their dinners, at-homes, b.a.l.l.s, etcetera, either. And that makes Adolphine furious. But we don't care in the least."

"And Aunt and Uncle Ruyvenaer?"

"They go to the at-home days," laughed Adeline, "but not to the dinners.

And they have their own little Indian clique, which is very lively, but of course a thing quite by itself."

"Yes," reflected Constance. "A big family like ours necessarily has all sorts of sections...."

"And that is why Mamma is so devoted to her 'family-group,' in which all the different elements meet."

"Sometimes we don't see one another for weeks and months at a time, except on those Sunday evenings...."

"And tell me: Karel and Cateau...."

"Ka-rel and Ca-teau," said Gerrit, mimicking Cateau, "live ve-ry com-fortably and have ve-ry nice little din-ners all by their lit-tle selves, _don't_ they, Adel-ine?"

They laughed.

"I was always fond of Karel," said Constance. "Of Karel and you, Gerrit.... Do you remember, in the river, behind the Palace at Buitenzorg...."

He looked at her long, seeking their childish past in her eyes:

"Yes, you were a pretty child then. You used to act all sorts of fairy-tales with us, among those great, spreading leaves: stories of a princess and fairies and knights and I don't know what. You were a darling of a child: such a dainty, pale little elf, in your white cotton _baadjet_[9]; and your brothers were in love with you.... But two years later, when I was a boy of sixteen and you fifteen, you suddenly became a stuck-up girl, in a long ball-dress, and you refused to dance with any one except old staff-officers and the secretary-general...."

"And what am I now?" she asked, smiling, with her soul full of sadness.

"The lost sister ... found again."

"Yes, the lost sister, indeed!"

"Come, Sissy, not so gloomy!"

"My life has been hard to bear."

"But you have your boy, your child. Children are everything."

"My life has been nothing but mistake upon mistake. And I am so afraid that I shan't bring up my boy properly."

"Then leave that to your husband!" said Gerrit, man-like.

"Oh, really?" said Adeline. "Is she to leave that to her husband?"

"Yes, Adeline. Just as we do. I the boys, you the girls."

"Oh, really?"

"But, Gerrit, if I leave Addie to Van der Welcke, I shall have nothing left, nothing."

"Then be bolder and have no fear."

"Oh, life is sometimes so difficult!... So, Adeline, Gerrit, you will care a little for your lost sister who has been found again?"

Adeline kissed Constance.

Mamma van Lowe approached, radiant, as always, at the "family-group"

which she had brought together.

"Mamma, I am so glad, so happy, to be among you all!" murmured Constance.

The maids entered with the coats and wraps.